The Crossroads (4 page)

He raised his voice. ‘Papa, you've got to go to work!'

He must have drunk a barrelful of beer.

Ah to hell with it!
he said to himself and was about to leave when he heard a groan which might as easily have come from beyond the grave as out of that bundle. ‘No, today … today … I'm going … I have to … Danilo … Quattro …'

‘OK. See you later. I must be going or I'll miss the bus.' Cristiano moved towards the door.

‘Wait a minute …'

‘It's late, pa …' Cristiano bristled.

‘Give me my cigarettes.'

The boy snorted and searched round the room for the packet.

‘They're in my trousers.' His father's face emerged from the sleeping bag, yawning. The mark of the zip on his cheek. ‘My God, that chicken we had last night was shit … I'll cook something this evening … I'll do some lasagne, what do you say to that?'

Cristiano threw the packet to his father, who caught it deftly. ‘Look, I'm in a hurry … I'll miss the bus, I told you.'

‘Hold on a minute! What's got into you today?' Rino lit himself a cigarette. For an instant his face was enveloped in a white cloud. ‘Last night I dreamed we were eating lasagne. I can't remember where, but it was delicious. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to make some myself today.'

Why does he always talk such bullshit?
Cristiano asked himself. It was as much as he could do to cook a couple of fried eggs, and he couldn't even do that without breaking the yolk.

‘I'll make it with loads of béchamel. And sausages. If you do the shopping, I'll make you some lasagne so delicious you'll be forced to bow down and admit that I'm your God.'

‘Yeah, like last time, when you made pasta with a sauce of clams and sand.'

‘There's nothing wrong with a bit of sand in clams.'

Cristiano, as usual, fell into a reverie as he looked at him.

He thought that if his father had been born in America he would definitely have been an actor. Not a pansy actor like the guy who played James Bond. No, a hard man like Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson. Someone who went to Vietnam.

He had the face of a tough guy.

Cristiano liked the shape of his skull and his ears, which were small and round, not like his own. The square jaw and the little black dots of his beard, the small nose, the cold stare of his eyes and the little creases that appeared around them when he laughed.

And he liked the fact that he was not too tall, but well proportioned, like a boxer. With a lot of bulging muscles. And he liked the barbed-wire tattoo around his biceps. He wasn't so keen on his beer-belly and that lion's head on his shoulder which looked more like a monkey. But even the Celtic cross on his right pectoral wasn't bad.

Why can't I be like him?

They didn't even look like father and son, except for the colour of their eyes.

‘Hey! Are you listening to me?'

Cristiano looked at his watch. It was very late. The first bus had already passed. ‘Look, I've got to go!'

‘Okay, but first you've got to give a kiss to the only man you've ever loved.'

Cristiano laughed and shook his head. ‘No! You're disgusting, you stink to high heaven.'

‘Hark who's talking! The last time you took a shower you were in primary school.' Rino shoved the cigarette into an empty beer can, grinning. ‘Come over here at once and kiss your God. Remember that without me you wouldn't have existed, and if I hadn't been around your mother would have had an abortion, so kiss this Latin male.'

Cristiano puffed out his cheeks, muttered ‘Jesus Christ' and brushed his father's rough cheek with his lips. He was about to move away when Rino grabbed him by the wrist, used his free hand to wipe his cheek and gave a grimace of disgust. ‘Ugh! I've got a pansy son!'

‘Fuck off!' Cristiano started laughing and hitting him with his rucksack.

‘Ooh yes … Again … Again … I like it …' Rino sighed idiotically.

‘You bastard …' And the blows rained down on his shaven pate.

Rino rubbed the back of his head and then suddenly turned
menacing: ‘What the hell do you think you're doing? Not on the head! You little fool! You hurt me! You know I've got a headache!'

Cristiano was taken aback, and stammered, ‘I'm sorry … I didn't mean to …'

With a sudden movement Rino grabbed the gun from the bedside table, yanked Cristiano towards him, bringing him crashing down on the bed, and put the barrel to his forehead.

‘Fooled you again! Always keep your guard up. You'd be dead by now,' he whispered in his ear conspiratorially.

Cristiano tried to get up, but his father held him down with his arm. ‘Let me go! Let me go! You bastard …' he protested.

‘Only if you give me a kiss,' said Rino, proffering his cheek.

Reluctantly Cristiano kissed him again, and Rino yelled out in disgust: ‘It's true! I do have a pansy son!' and he started tickling him.

Cristiano giggled and tried to break free, gasping: ‘Please … Please … Please … Stop it …'

At last he managed to escape. He retreated from the bed, tucking his T-shirt into his trousers, and picked up his rucksack. As he went downstairs Rino shouted after him: ‘Hey, that was a good job you did last night.'

Forty-five-year-old Danilo Aprea was sitting at a table in the Bar Boomerang finishing his third grappa of the morning.

He too was tall, but unlike Quattro Formaggi he was large and had a stomach as swollen as that of a drowned cow. Not that he was exactly fat; his muscles were firm and his skin as white as marble. Every part of him was square: his fingers, his ankles, his feet, his neck. He had a cubic skull, a wall-like forehead and two deep-set hazel eyes on either side of a broad nose. A thin strip of beard framed his perfectly shaven cheeks. He wore gold-rimmed Ray-Ban glasses and his crew-cut hair was dyed mahogany red.

He too, like Quattro Formaggi, had a winter outfit, but unlike his friend's, his was always immaculately washed and ironed. A
checked flannel shirt. A hunter's waistcoat with lots of pockets. Jeans with a pleated front. Trainers. And, attached to his belt, a pouch for a Swiss Army knife and his mobile phone.

He economised on everything else, but not on his appearance. He had his beard trimmed and his hair dyed once a fortnight by the barber.

He was waiting for Quattro Formaggi, who, just for a change, was late. Not that Danilo was particularly bothered. In the bar it was nice and warm and he was in a strategic position. The table, by the front window, overlooked the street. Danilo held the
Gazzetta
dello Sport
up in front of him and now and then took a glance outside.

Directly opposite was the Credito Italiano dell'Agricoltura. He saw people going in and out through the metal detectors and the private guard outside the entrance talking into his mobile.

That guard really pissed him off. With his bullet-proof jacket, his emblazoned beret, his gleaming pistol, his sunglasses, his square jaw and his chewing-gum, who the fuck did he think he was? Tom Cruise?

But the thing that really interested Danilo Aprea was not the guard, but what was behind him: the ATM.

That was his objective. It was the most frequently used cashpoint in the village, as this bank had more customers than any other in Varrano, so it must be crammed with money.

There were two CCTV cameras positioned above the machine. One to the right and one to the left, so as to cover the whole surrounding area. And no doubt they were connected to a set of video-recorders inside the bank. But that wasn't a problem.

In actual fact there wasn't the slightest need for Danilo to sit there watching the movement in front of the bank. He had already worked out the plan down to the smallest detail. But watching that cash machine made him feel better.

The plan for the raid on the Credito dell'Agricoltura had been hatched six months before.

Danilo had been at the barber's, and leafing through the crime pages of the newspaper he had read that in a village near Cagliari a gang of crooks driving a four-by-four had smashed through the wall of a bank and carried off its cash machine.

While his hair was being dyed the story kept buzzing around in his head; this could be the turning point in his life.

The plan was quite simple.

‘Simplicity is the basis of every well-done thing,' his father used to tell him.

And it was easy to put into practice. The night in Varrano was so quiet that if you acted fast, who would see you? And who would ever suspect that such a respectable citizen as Danilo Aprea could have robbed a bank?

With the loot he would make Teresa's dream come true. The dream of opening a lingerie boutique. Danilo was sure that if he gave her a shop his wife would come back to him, and then he would find the strength to go to Alcoholics Anonymous and dry out.

After Cristiano's departure Rino Zena had gone back to sleep, and when he had woken up again the whistling in his ears, as if by magic, had vanished, along with the band of pain round his head. It had been replaced by a ravenous hunger.

He lay in bed and imagined a dish of chargrilled sausages accompanied by plenty of bread.

His cock was hard and his balls were as full as hard-boiled eggs.

How long is it since I last had a fuck?

It had been at least two weeks. But when he had a headache screwing was the last thing on his mind.

This evening I'll go out on the town
, he said to himself, struggling to get up from the mattress and going into the bathroom naked, with his pecker sticking out in front of him like the bowsprit of a schooner.

In the course of his life Rino had encountered difficulties of many kinds, but these did not include finding a woman to fuck or someone to pick a fight with.

And recently he had found a couple of bars where skinheads, punks and all the local freaks hung out. A bunch of rich kids who showed off riding round on Harley-Davidsons worth thirty thousand
euros. Rino despised them, but their womenfolk swarmed over him like flies on a dog turd.

All the girls followed the same career pattern: most started out as shaven-headed anorexics who tattooed swastikas and Celtic crosses on their bums and for a while played at being bad girls and slept around. They would fuck up their brains with cut shit, then get sent off to some American clinic to detox, have their tattoos lasered off, marry a rich businessman and end up driving around in a Mercedes wearing a miniskirt and a bouclé jacket.

But Rino took advantage of the transitional phase and of their undiscriminating desire for sex and intense experience. He would put his mark on them, then kick them out next morning with their pussies on fire and a few bruises. And most of the slags came back for more.

Stupid cows!

He plunged into the ice-cold shower, shaved his skull and then put on a tiny vest, his trousers and his boots.

He went down the stairs into the lounge, a room of about thirty square metres. On one side of it was the front door, on the other side a hall leading to the kitchen, a toilet and a broom cupboard.

The floor was covered with reddish linoleum which rode up against the red-brick and concrete walls. On one side of the room was a table draped with a green-and-white checked plastic tablecloth, and two benches. On the other the television area. Two blue plastic crates with an old Saba colour TV on top. To change channels without getting up the Zenas used a broomstick, ramming it against the big channel buttons. Opposite the TV were a sofa bed with a filthy cover and three white folding chairs with plastic threads. There was also an orange-coloured iron bench with a barbell loaded with weights. Lastly, in one corner, next to a big box full of newspapers and a pile of firewood, there stood a cast-iron stove. A ventilator fan on a stick served in winter to spread the warmth of the stove and in summer to stir the sultry air.

Danilo and Quattro Formaggi would soon be arriving.

I can do some work on my biceps
, Rino said to himself. But he abandoned the idea. His tummy was rumbling and his cock was still erect.

He turned on the TV and started wanking as he watched a blonde bitch with a pendant as big as the medallion of a turkey round her
neck helping a fat man prepare some fillets of wild mullet in a sauce of raspberry, chestnut and sage.

With his pecker in his hand, Rino gave a gesture of disgust. That pansy crap they were cooking had made him lose his hard-on.

Danilo Aprea looked at the old Casio digital watch on his wrist.

A quarter past eight and there was still no sign of Quattro Formaggi.

He took out the purse in which he kept his coins. He had three euros and … He brought the small coins closer to his eyes. Twenty … Forty cents.

Four years had passed since they had changed the currency and he still found it confusing. What had been wrong with the lira?

He got up and ordered another grappa.

This'll be the last one, though …

At that moment a mother entered the bar with a little girl bundled up in a white parka holding her hand.

“How old is she?”
he restrained himself from asking the woman.

“Three,”
she would have answered. He was sure she was three, or four at most.

Like
…

(Stop it)
Teresa's voice reproved him.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if Teresa came round this afternoon?

Teresa Carucci, a woman as insipid as a bowl of celery soup (as Rino had put it to him once) and whom Danilo had asked to be his bride one evening in 1996, had left him four years ago to set up home with a tyre dealer who she had been working for as a secretary.

Yet Teresa continued to see Danilo. Unknown to the tyre dealer she brought him trays of lasagne, spezzatino and rabbit cacciatore to put in the freezer. She would always arrive out of breath, sweep the flat and iron his shirts and he would start begging her to stay and give it another try. She would retort that it was impossible to live with an alcoholic. And, in the early days, sometimes
she had felt sorry for him, and had lifted up her skirt and let him screw her.